Page 166 of Slashed Bonds

That’s new.

Not the neutral, not the antiseptic nothing of hormones crushed flat by five years of daily suppression.

This is… fuck, dare I say it’s embarrassing?

It’s thick, high, and so specific I think if someone else opened the door they’d know exactly when I started to want, dare, and dream.

It’s rising. Even as I notice it, it gets stronger. Not like the first time, when the wrong hands juiced me up, and I was so ashamed I tried to bleach the sheets.

The odd part is how I want it to fill the air until there’s no oxygen left for anyone but us.

Water ticks off my scalp, off the soaked ends of my hair, off the sharp point of Killian’s chin onto the hollow of my collarbone. A smirk finds me in the dark—I feel him arrive before touch confirms it. A wave of heat precedes him, then the soft disturbance of breath, the subtle rearrangement of air when a man abandons politeness and closes the final inches.

His mouth meets the side of my neck, just below the ear.

A shiver works through me, unbidden. His mouth travels an unhurried path, retracing earlier kisses—open, slow along the tendon—until his tongue finds the scar beneath my ink. He lingers there, a flat press as if confirming the claim.

Then he’s at my ear.

Teeth close on the lobe. Not sharp—possessive. A tug, then a slow suck that echoes straight down my spine.

His whisper comes damp against the shell: “Now it’s off.”

A pause filled only by the sound of his breathing shaping words.

“But we both know that isn’t what I was referring to. Was it?”

I don’t need sight to envision his expression— Killian with his gaze lowered, attention absolute.

His hands begin at my chest.

Not claiming it—Nikolai still holds me there.

Instead, Killian’s palms glide down the lengths of my arms, shoulder to wrist, so deliberate that the water on my skin cools in their wake and warms again on the return. Under my breasts now, his fingers skim lightly over Nikolai’s knuckles where they cup me—a silent exchange between them conducted across my ribs.

I catch only fragments. The rest I reconstruct from touch and inference.

I feel Nikolai’s chin heavy on my right shoulder, the prickle of stubble, the unwavering weight of his attention since the spray ceased.

Killian’s hands continue downward.

Over the taut plane of my stomach, pausing at the soft dip beneath my navel as though tracing a forgotten inscription.

Then I hear him sink to his knees—not assumption, but certainty.

The room fills with droplets falling from three bodies onto stone, each impact distinct.

One. One. One. It could be haunting.

His hands trace the outer lines of my thighs. Another shiver ripples through me. He turns his palms inward. His tongue finds what his mouth has not yet reached.

Inner thigh—the left one. A long, flat lick through gathering wetness, generous and searingly hot. The groan he releases against my skin is raw, unperformed.

“Our Monarch is so fucking sweet today.” He kisses the same spot—open-mouthed. I quiver; he feels it and kisses again. “Sweet and fucking generous.”

He inhales deeply, exhales slowly—breath breaking across damp skin like a tide.

“I bet you’re extra delicious.”